RISC OS on the Raspberry Pi

Fireworks has been releasted as freeware this should be included.

Jeffrey: I’ve got an LG GE20NU11 CD/DVD USB reader/writer. Can I offer any help by testing your driver?

How about a demo of EFF’s True Type/OpenType/PostScript Translator?

There seems to be little discussion of the educational contribution, apart from Trevor Johnson’s suggestions. I see the Rasberry Pi website is looking at Linux resources. As someone who worked on 14-19 curriculum implementation for the last government and currently is responsible for running teams for the HE inspectorate (QAA) can I comment on this. I cannot think of much specifically written teaching or programmed learning software which it would be worth considering. The model, I suggest, should be the virtual learning environment which is now pretty universal in secondary education and above and is appearing in primary schools. These are generally organised around information, tools, resources and communications and I suggest this is a good way to approach the education question.

Information and resources depend to some extent on what the objective of the project is – if it is to encourage coding then the information and resources should relate to these. But this is something of an open schema and different information and resources could be added for different purposes.

Tools and Communications are perhaps more controversial but my suggestions would be fairly straightforward.
1. Wordprocessor / Database / Spreadsheet – some suggestions of integrated packages have been made but Writer, a flat file database (Acorn did a subset of Datapower I think – perhaps Andrew Rawnsley could oblige) and simple spread sheet from the choice available might be more approachable. Again what age groups are being aimed at?
2. A research / knowledge / ideas organiser – I still use Thinksheet successfully on the Iyo but Clares I think produced a more ambitious knowledge organiser
3. A temporal organiser – Organiser springs to mind.
4. A Thesaurus
5. Table editor, Diagram maker, Charting software – George Buchanan did a range of really simple but effective programmes, but has apparently disappeared.
6. Email programme and browser – Netsurf obviously and use webmail?
7. File handling software – Pdf reader, graphics converter, etc
8. Creative materials – Draw, Paint and ?

In the end education comes from the creative use of good tools and resources to create things – essays and reports, spreadsheets, art works, newsletters, posters etc based on investigation and understanding. This underlies development at any phase of education and this is what educational software should really sustain.

Hope this helps.

John

Charting software etc.: the programs by Chris Johnson would be good to package. ChartDraw, GraphDraw, MultiPlot, FNPlotter. He has also written various educational software.

Fireworkz: I don’t think that it is currently allowed to be packaged up – see notice on http://fireworkz.abacusline.co.uk/index.htm

Good thoughts, John.
I suspect that your excellent suggestions are not to the fore (yet) because initially the Raspberry Pi is not being specifically targetted at schools. They will not be exhibiting at the next BETT for example. To begin with, it’s more geeks, developers, and people who like to tinker that it will appeal to. They are doing a marvelous job of getting such folks (including us) interested.
They clearly have a desire to see educational issues tackled and have gererated a lot of discussion through suggesting we need a modern BBCmicro and a move to engage and enthuse the young about computing and programming.
Once it’s released it’s really anyones guess as to where the whole thing will go – probably a thousand different directions at once – but you are right to speak up because, right at the start, what we as individuals do could have quite a big impact on that explosion of activity. Chaos theory in action, I would suggest.
Regards,
Martin.

http://www.piLEARN.com

Thinksheet

Any ideas whether the RISC OS version is still available?

Thesaurus

Does anyone have any idea on the status of WordWorks?

will not be exhibiting at the next BETT for example

IMHO that’s a mistake because it could arm teachers for future submission of funding requests. I know it’s a valid concern that preparation for the show can ruin Christmas, but all the same I hope the R-pi team will reconsider.

[Edit: I’ve now checked out the exhibitor prices for BETT: std. rate £444+VAT… and that’s the price per sq.m.! The only apparent consolation is that the price covers 4 days.]

Message for Martin as I couldn’t immediately find another way to contact you.

The Quicksand font you put on your new web site works fine on this Iyonix. However there’s a better way to package it. If you put the Quicksand directory inside a directory called !Fonts, the user installing the new fonts can use the Font Merge tool in !Boot (!Boot → Fonts → Install fonts).

Hence, no need to root around inside !Boot yourself, no need to copy any files, and no need to reboot the computer.

Also, and I’ve no idea how much control you have over this, Quicksand.Light is (IMHO) too faint to be used as a desktop font, and Quicksand.Book isn’t much better. If antialiasing is turned off, the text pretty much disappears altogether. Is there anything that can be done about this?

John, thanks for your input. It’s really useful to have the perspective of someone who’s actually at the coalface, as it were. At the moment we’re just focusing on getting a RISC OS system that works, at all. A working RISC OS system can then be a springboard into all kinds of directions. Any help pursuing these would be welcome!

Raspberry Pi is about teaching computer science (ie understanding how to write software, not just use it), but that doesn’t mean we should ignore traditional IT areas. The current IT curriculum seems particularly focused on what are essentially electronic versions of paper documents (text, graphics, figures). RISC OS does paper quite well and the internet comparatively badly, so that’s one area that it should handle without too much problem. But for the fact that most of the traditional ‘office’ apps are commercial. As Rob pointed out, Fireworkz is freeware – I’d seen Pipedream but that isn’t 32 bit, so thanks for the tip. I’m making enquiries.

Dear All,
I’ve open sourced my variation on the Acorn Nut logo made with Draw and ArtWorks for piLEARN.
Feel free to adapt in anyway you like.
With ArtWorks it’s easy to change the colours – It looks very nice in the original Acorn green but it was too stuck in the past for me so I didn’t use that version.
The zipped ArtWorks file is at…
http://www.pilearn.com/Pages/Page0004.html
Regards,
Martin.

Hi Rik
Thanks for the packaging tip for the font.
I’ll redo it in a few days when things calm down a bit.

As I understand it, Raspberry Pi are only going to use Quicksand.Bold next to the Raspberry Pi logo and in headlines and the Quicksand.Book in sub-headings. I don’t think it’ll be used for the smaller text. My info is that a new website will be revealed at launch, of perhaps a revamp of existing. I’ve not taken much interest in fonts before I gleaned that Quicksand was where they were going. It should be possible to adjust the font, or morph it into one of your own, using FontEd but I don’t think it loads into the editor correctly. This issue and more are currently being batted back and forth on csa.misc

Two Quicksand threads are active there;

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.acorn.misc/browse_thread/thread/25e17bb83d4dda38/b6451fdea1429b4b?show_docid=b6451fdea1429b4b

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.acorn.misc/browse_thread/thread/c8dda83400662dc7#

Regards,
Martin.

http://www.RISCOScode.com

Fireworkz: I don’t think that it is currently allowed to be packaged up

I’m making enquiries.

This is a bit of a shame (if it’s definitive), although I’m sure Gerald Fitton has good reasons and of course must distribute his software only as he chooses. Anyway, I guess it can be listed under ‘Software links’. Regarding approaches to authors, I was thinking of composing a brief community licensing request communication, for general use. Perhaps previous communications would be a good starting point, if you fancy pasting your email there, Theo.

It’s definitive.

I’ve pasted the email I sent out to someone else on that page. That was sent to someone who had previously written open source software, so I don’t need to evangelise about open source but had some older software that wasn’t open licensed. Obviously the approach will be different if the author appears to be less aware of/favourable to open software in the first place. (The main issue being that packaging binaries means remixing the contents a bit… strictly a ‘no modifications’ licence doesn’t allow us to do that. Giving out the source is less of a primary concern)

(Apologies for the bad formatting – it’s a bit late!)

pasted the email

Thanks – that’s really helpful.

it’s a bit late!

Zzz – hope you don’t have an early start today!

Right, here’s a revised version of the community licensing request communication. [Edit: And here’s a link again to the current version.]

• Theo (in particular, but in fact everyone), please note footnotes 3 & 4
• All, typos/clarifications

I’ve rearranged it a bit…

Nice one! I particularly liked the change from “dozens” to “hundreds”. I’ll send a few messages off myself on Sun/Mon, pending any other significant amendments.

Regarding reaching “as many RISC OS developers as we can”, is this going to be classed as a general open letter, in addition to any direct communications people may send in connection with the R-Pi release? Not all software could be sensibly included on the disc image, but is it a longer term aspiration for package management?

In any case, a ROOL press release would probably be helpful – guys, should we draft something about contacting authors if you’re too swamped with things?

I’ve been meaning to do a csa.announce/etc posting ‘RISC OS on RPi needs you’. However there are a few things I need to check up on first…

I don’t have any particular objection if you want to send off some emails to a small number of specific software authors… perhaps you could CC me too?

I think it would be particularly good to aim towards packaging as a wider goal. I recently got a BBxM as my first 32 bit machine, where my Risc PC disc image is useless. I’ve spent far far too long fiddling about solving tedious chicken-and-egg stuff. For example there’s no network driver by default. But I can’t just download it, because I don’t have a network driver. And once I’ve got the network driver set up, I haven’t any means of downloading files. So I can’t download a web browser, and even if I could NetSurf has several other dependencies I need to install first. And so on. A lot of RISC OS users don’t realise how much software they’ve built up over the years and how long it took.

CC me too

No problem. I was just thinking of filling in a few more blanks on the disc image page, but if it’s better for you to do all of this then that could make sense because you’re more informed than most of us anyway.

had a quick look at Sourcery Development tool, source manager works on Xm uses C/C++ or GCC nominated by drobe for a best of 2005 award, the more development tools we can get the better this is from the the really small software company. this is public domain software.

I think it would be particularly good to aim towards packaging as a wider goal.

Definitely. Would Pi recommended programs work? (A package of recommended programs, a small amount of documentation being the package, and the programs all being depenencies?)

For testing on an Iyonix, I can think of two (nice) ways to do it.

Removable hard drives, or a special softload that boots from USB (perhaps with no IDE support at all?)

I am going to see whether a removable drive is viable on my Iyonix. (Using SATA adaptor)

RISC OS gets a mention in the Raspberry Pi article published on The Register this morning:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/28/raspberry_pi/

I’ll send a few messages off myself on Sun/Mon

Theo, you should be copied in (I spotted I’d accidentally BCC’ed you on one of them – sorry). I’ve not checked the missing licences before sending, so hope that’s OK with authors where it’s all laid out clearly… anyway, it’s courteous to contact them all the same.

In the end education comes from the creative use of good tools and resources to create things […] Table editor, Diagram maker, Charting software – George Buchanan did a range of really simple but effective programmes, but has apparently disappeared.

Seeing as Dalriada was “also active in Human-Computer Interface research”, perhaps he’s this chap, who’s now here. Does anyone recognise the mugshot? [Edit: Further stalking courtesy of linkedin.]

if it is to encourage coding then the information and resources should relate to these.

The R-Pi thread Getting Teachers Onboard (UK) begins by introducing Gambas (German page here ).¹ Is this something which could be worth considering porting at some point (maybe the availability of libraries will be an issue)? [Edit: It’s possibly multi-platform.]

¹ Wikibooks with examples linked to at bottom, other examples at gambaslinux.eg2.fr/.

I have managed to get some of the sources from Dalriada, unfortunately after two years I’s still awaiting the missing bits. When he finds the time he will send them to me!
They will not be released as opensource for contractual reasons and will remain a commercial product.